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questions about transplanting outside and flowering

nebhellbillheat

15 years ago

I have been putting my pepper plants outside during the day they are in containers. There are already starting to flower. I was wondering if it was too early for that in nebraska and should trim off the flowers ? Or should I just leave them be and look foward to the fruits that have just begone to flower ?

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Comments (3)

tsheets
15 years ago
From what I can tell, there are generally two schools of thought.

1) Clip the blooms if the plant is still pretty small, to give it a chance to grow a larger plant before devoting energy to fruiting,

2) Leave them be, the plant will take care of itself (often they will abort the bloom/bud if conditions aren't right).

You could try both methods on different plants and see which produces more by the end of the season. Might be a fun experiment if nothing else.

Last year, I had one cayenne plant that set fruit early and I didn't prune it. That plant was much smaller than the others for a long time. But, by the end of the season, the size was pretty close. I didn't really keep track of how many peppers I got off each one, but, there were plenty of all of my plants. Note: they were in the ground, not containers.
vic01
15 years ago
Someone I think ottawapepper has a good practice concerning planting out: 60 degree days, 50 degree nights and 4-5 inches tall. That pretty much says it all and you need to put the peppers out gradually, harden them off, so they don't get sun scald or wind damage.
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nebhellbillheat
Original Author
14 years ago
I've been hardening off my plants over the last few weeks. I had bad luck this year starting from seed so I skipped that process this year and just bought seedlings from various nuserys around town. All my pepper plants are about 5 to 6 inches tall except for my jalapeno plants wich I would estimate at about 12 inches or so ( would that be considered leggy for jalapeno plants this early on ? ) So all and all I should be doing alright so far probably going to wait until near june to transplant outside. All my seedlings are hardend off pretty well wich is just luck I didn't even know that term until about a week ago. I just wanted to watch them when I first put them outside to see how they did in the wind so I kept bringing them in after an hour or so. dumb luck there. So by the time I transplant them outside they should be more then ready. I can leave them out for most the day in full sun and they do fine, no wind damage or anything.

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